The Big Uh-Oh

My local paper, the Sacramento Bee, recently ran a a series of articles centered around the fact that beginning this month, the first members of the Baby Boom Generation will now be entering retirement age.

The series told how starting the first day of this year, and for the next nineteen years, some ten thousand baby boomers will turn 65 every day.

That’s 10,000 people expecting to retire.

Every Day.

And already most of them are surprised to find “retirement” is not going to happen. The money just isn’t there.

The Bee observes that this was a generation of people who, for the most part, “were raised in a prosperous, consumer-centered era, took on debt freely, and saved meagerly.”

Most had intended to cash in the equity on their homes, take hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits, and move to a cheaper location to live out their golden years. Now those homes are under water, all that imagined equity just a paper illusion.

When the Boomers were in their twenties, the prospect of some day receiving seven or eight hundred dollars a month in social security benefits seemed more than adequate in a day when nine hundred a month was a pretty nice middle class salary. Never mind that social security won’t be around for long; that amount wouldn’t be enough to pay a month’s rent in most cities anyhow. Most horrifying of all, many who had depended on their “guaranteed” pensions are finding those pension funds either looted or grossly insufficient.

Let this sink in. We have arrived at a place where an astounding 75 million people are waking up to discover that the money they were counting on to survive on simply isn’t there.

The Bee quotes the AARP Public Policy Institute: “Only a quarter of boomers will be financially comfortable in retirement.”

That leaves 75 percent who will either keep working in a struggle to survive old age, or “end their years in poverty.”

Are You Scared Yet?

I don’t mean to frighten you with all of this. No, I take that back. I do mean to frighten you. But I’m hoping to scare you into taking action.

Last year at this time I took stock of my situation. I had just turned 58 years old (yes, I’m a Boomer, and just as ill-prepared as any). I was well aware of our country’s impending slide into economic collapse. Like many my age, I had no savings, no house, no pension. Was there anything I could do besides wait for that day when my wife and I would simply starve to death?

I knew the smartest thing for us was to begin amassing a supply of stored food, but how? We exist in that financial strata euphemistically referred to as “lower-lower middle class.” I was already living paycheck to paycheck. How could we possibly squeeze out any extra for food storage? It didn’t seem feasible.

Well, the first step was to really, truly come to grips with the gravity of the situation. If our outlook was close to desperate now, how was it going to look a year from now?

The key to finding your way, your motivation to sock something away for the future, is to sober up and understand how real this is. Things aren’t going to get better in America; not for some time. Better to do anything rather than nothing.

So I started a new hobby. I decided I would obsessively collect food. I figured if I could get us even a month or two ahead, at least that was something.

I got serious about food storage. The first thing I did was contact Efoods, buy a seven day responder, and had it shipped to me.

I opened the large outer box and looked inside. There were seven smaller boxes, each containing a day’s worth of meals, hefty and shiny in their separate mylar packets. I had my first full week’s supply of storable food!

I was hooked.

Having that first seven days’ supply of food on hand was both exhilarating and motivating. We found ways to give up a little more now so we’d have a lot more for the future. In no time we had several cases of food stacked about, more than we would have thought possible.

And that’s what you need to do. If you’re a Baby Boomer, you know that social security check isn’t gonna cut it. If you’re not a Baby Boomer, you know that social security check isn’t gonna be there. If you are to survive, you must be driven to make food storage your new hobby, your passion, your obsession. Don’t waste a dime on anything else.

Whatever new year’s resolutions you’ve already made, allow me to suggest one more: resolve to keep your family alive during the coming storm.

If you’ve found your way to this blog, you’re most likely already smart enough to know that we are heading for a doozy of an economic crisis in this country. So stay scared enough to devote all your spare time and money to your new hobby: collecting cases and cases of storable food.

Yes, you could invest in gold and silver, and if you have money to spare, you absolutely should. But first buy food, and plenty of it. Otherwise, what do you think you’ll be spending that hard earned gold and silver on? You’ll be trading it at inflated prices to someone who piled up a lot of extra food. Remember, before anything else, you have to eat. If you can afford to buy both food and silver every month, I’d be buying both simultaneously.

So this is your savings plan: Whatever you can afford. And if you think you can’t afford anything, you’re wrong. If your funds are meager, do as my wife and I did, resolve to buy at least a case of dehydrated food each month. Take it right out of the grocery money if you can’t find it anywhere else.

Believe me, if you’re serious about this, you can find a way to come up with a hundred dollars a month, and that will just about buy a case of one of the many restaurant quality soups available from Efoods. $140.00 will get you a case of heartier meals like Beef Stroganoff, Au Gratin Potatoes, Chili and Dumplings, or a two week Responder pack. If you have kids, or even if you don’t, you’ll want an entire case of Shells and Cheese. For around twenty bucks you can get an assortment of the bakery goods.

I was astounded to learn that most Efoods products are actually a lot cheaper than comparable food in the grocery store, so I figured if I overspent on any particular month, we could always eat what we had just bought. Plus, most Efoods meals are better tasting than the stuff I’m used to getting at the store. I’m going to need another entire case of tropical fruit mix just because I couldn’t keep my hands off the supply I had.

Make It Easy On Yourself

What actually turned out to be the most painless for us was earmarking $144 a month for twelve months and having Efoods set aside a full year’s supply of food for us on layaway. It’s been almost a year already and we’re just about ready to have that shipment sent.

Here’s the thing. Last year we were dirt poor and scared. One year later we’ve got a few months worth of food on hand and a year’s supply on the way. Not to mention fifty-four gallons of fresh, clean water, and more than two month’s worth of toilet paper.

And the fear has left us.

Yes, you might say that what we have so far is not going to be enough. But it’s a boatload more than I thought I’d ever be able to amass in this short a time. And I intend to keep at it until I run out of space to put it all.

Besides, there is an incredible feeling of security when you know you’re doing something. The old proverb “God helps those who help themselves” could never be truer. God wants you to be prepared, and if you start in, He will see that you succeed.

How Much Time Do We Have?

If you keep substantial money in savings or in the stock market, now is the time to take it out and buy tangible food before the value of your savings deteriorates further.

If you have sought out this website, you’re likely already informed enough to know that the fed is planning to print four trillion dollars this year alone. That means hyperinflation is coming, and it will hit like a tsunami. China and Russia are pulling back from their investments in the U.S. Dollar, because they see the signs of the dollar’s impending collapse.

It will collapse. And when it does, all hell will break loose. The good news is we may have as much as five years to prepare before the U.S. completely defaults on it’s debt.

The bad news is we may only have this year.

As Porter Stansberry says, “People ask me ‘when is it all gonna start, when is it all going down?’”

“The question I ask in return is ‘what’s it going to take for you to notice it’s already happening?’”

So get serious. If you have a lot of money, buy two to four years worth of food for every member of your family, then put the rest into silver. If you’re not rich, just keep at it a month at a time. You’ll get there. You have to.

3 Responses to “The Big Uh-Oh”

Bumpkin

Yes, its happening, Yes, food is my hobby. I’m an unabashed addict. However, do you REALLY think the government, after martial law is enacted, (which it has to be for Obama to get his necessary free-reign to create his eutopia) will not come to our homes and confiscate “for the greater good” EVERY last bit of your food, to hand it out to the ex-foodstamp recipients and the retired boomers with no food stored? You had better believe it. Make SURE you block any actions at all toward decreasing your right to keep and bear arms. I have a mentor who told me several years ago that the housing market will absolutely collapse when the Boomers start retiring. He told us that so many of them own homes, and will no longer have the income to pay taxes and maintain these homes, or are upside down on their mortgages, and many many of these homes will be vacated, and will flood the market, and there are simply not enough upcoming Americans to buy them all… there will be so many empty houses, which will collapse the building/architect businesses, which will collapse entire communities, which will collapse much of the logging industry. My advice to you all- get into the medical field if you want to work in the near future- we are quickly becoming, more daily, a retirement nation. The elderly will ultimately have to go live with their children, if they had any- at least many will, I mena in the hundreds of thousands. Desperate people, who cannot find work, will rent out a room, or R&B out a bedroom or two to elderly folks, in order to make ends meet.

Toni

Sounds scary. I have noticed that the age of full retirement keeps going up. I think some people can’t collect it until they’re 70. I won’t collect. I haven’t put in enough SS $ to be given back any that I did put in (according to a letter the SSA sent to me about my “retirement benefits”).